New year, same questions
The questions of fairness and justice persist as the major issues facing Irish society in 2006
The coming year will of course have surprises but some of the central issues in our society will remain and we hope these will be addressed more centrally than they have been so far.
The main issues we identify are as follows:
The unfairness in our society as represented by the huge inequalities in income, wealth, health welfare and education. We have commented recently on the data which shows that nearly a million people here live on incomes of less than €10,000 a year. The premature mortality for people in the lower socio-economic bracket is several multiples of the premature mortality rate for people in the higher socio-income brackets for all the major diseases including heart conditions and cancers.
Over 100,000 households are in need of housing. Conditions in many of the mental hospitals, notably the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, remain scandalous. Funding for mental health remains far lower than it used to be as a proportion of the health budget.
There are areas of huge disadvantage all around the country in inner cities and towns and in rural areas. The RAPID and other plans to deal with this, announced with such flourish almost six years ago, has resulted in negligible additional funding.
We certainly have a major crime problem but it is not that, primarily, that the politicians focus upon. It has to do with sexual crime and corporate/white collar crime. The incidence of sexual crime is huge, as represented by the SAVI report of 2002, which has got such negligible attention. Over 100,000 people in this society are reckoned to have been raped as children, many more otherwise sexually abused. While the Stay-Safe programme in primary schools is welcome, there has been a failure to monitor its effectiveness and to provide adequate training for teachers in providing this programme. Aside from that far too little has been done to deal with the epidemic of abuse – why, if we are so exercised about clerical sexual abuse, are we so indifferent to the sexual abuse of children generally?
The issue of corporate crime came to attention in the Fyffes case which we report on in this issue of Village (note: we are NOT saying there was corporate crime involved in this instance, rather we are saying that the issue arose in connection with the case). Far too little attention is paid to the issue of "insider trading", which essentially amounts to large scale theft. Far too little attention is paid also to the issue of tax fraud.
Another issue of major significance, which is ignored persistently by Government, is primary and early school education. There is a huge literacy problem here and this can be dealt with only by very much more investment in education at primary and pre-school level. A major disappointment of the recent budget was its failure to address this issue, even in the context of child care.
There is then the issue of road deaths, caused by two factors in the main: drink driving and speed. Only gardaí can deal with the drink driving issue but the issue of speed could be addressed otherwise, for instance by an insistence that all cars be fitted with moderators that would disable them from being driven over a certain speed, for instance 50 MPH. Most "drivers" scorn such a suggestion, but were it to contribute to a substantial drop in road fatalities, would the scorn of the "motorist lobby" be worth suffering?
On Northern Ireland the crucial issue remains: policing. Until there is a widespread cross-community agreement on policing the issue of peace there will remain unresolved. This has always been the central issue: far more important than decommissioning, the disbandment of paramilitary organisations and the other issues which preoccupy official minds.
On foreign policy the central issue for Ireland is whether we continue to facilitate American conduct of what is called "the war on terror", including its abuses of the human rights of those it kidnaps and otherwise apprehends.
Politics here in the South has already entered pre-election mode, although an election may be 17 months away. This will stifle honest and open appraisals of issues. Politics for the next year and a half will be essentially about gossip, who will win what seat where. In between we hope to contribute to a debate on issues that matter including the issues we have addressed above.
vincent browne